Here is the announcement.Will you try it?I was toying with the idea of installing Server 2008. The fact that this beta will be installed by many people seems like it could improve the final product faster than the standard way of not releasing it free as a beta.

I've got Server 2008 on a spare harddrive and was swapping it with my Vista install. Since I moved from 32 bit to 64 bit Vista I haven't bothered, though... I am seriously tempted to replace Server 2008 with Win 7 beta and give it a whirl.

The system requirements are a bit high, but I hope VirtualBox can cope with it. I'm not that eager to try it as to partition one of the hard drives, and install it there, just wanna play with it a bit.

Might I suggest Microsoft to run for the Guinness World Record of the most downloaded piece of software? I'm sure they could give Firefox 3 a beating, exactly the same beating their servers are going to receive

Ehtyar: so, does VirtualBox virtualize the GPU, including 3D capabilites? That sounds like a seriously massive undertaking... and that's (imho) the only way for graphics to be able to run faster than the host.

If you're talking about the rest of the system running faster than the host, that would be doable with normal virtualization, even without hardware support (by doing the clever tricks vmware used to do before the VMX instruction set).

The graphics in a VM suck ofc (as you knew before posting that reply ). I meant just in general usability. IE in the VM noticeably outperformed IE in Vista, as did Firefox. This is also as a comparison to Vista, which certainly doesn't run faster than a host in a VM.

Anyway, having installed Windows 7 on the desktop, IT IS FAST!!! Boot speed has been significantly improved also.

It looks a whole lot better than Vista (as everyone already knows), and the Firewall looks like it is going to be working a whole lot better than the XP/Vista f/w. Just something quick to tantilise the taste buds (I am at work ya know ).

Windows 7 site seems already slow with people checking for the ISO, so be smart and use the Coral Content Delivery Network (add nyud.net to the hostname - should even work for the iso):http://www.microsoft...t/windows/windows-7/

As many of you know, I’m a hardcore Mac guy - but I wasn’t always this way. My experiences with Windows Vista sent me over the edge, prompting me to add the “hardcore” next to my “Mac guy” title. Still, I was excited to hear that Microsoft is releasing a beta download of Windows 7 on Friday - a move that might slow the switch-to-Mac momentum out there if the beta testers offer positive reviews. Just this morning, I thought about looking for my own Vista notebook. (My wife put it away after I was ready to literally toss it out of a second-floor window.)

But then I decided against the download and install. Given what I now know about the process, it already seems to be more trouble than its worth. Consider the following:

First of all I personally think the guy is a typical Mac fanboy. He clearly announces it in the first sentence of the article. And some of the reasons why he suggests skipping Windows 7 Beta seem superfluous; he mentions things like "be prepared to lose data" since all beta software has the potential to mess things up and he also quotes Ed Bott, who was speculating (i.e. guessing) when he said "good luck finding drivers for your hardware."

And the final thing that removes most credibility from the guy for me is this quote:

Quote

I know, I know. Many of you are probably thinking that I’m biased because I’ve gulped down Apple’s Kool-Aid and probably have already been labeled a Windows Hater. But I wasn’t always like this - Windows made me this way. That’s what made me switch - before switching was cool.

He says he switched to Macs before switching was cool, but in the second sentence of the article he says he became a hardcore Mac user because Vista drove him crazy. Is he serious? It was very cool to switch to Macs after Vista came out.